Twelfth Night, review: Shakespeare gets a marvellous Vegas makeover

If music be the food of love, there’s a veritable feast at Sean Holmes’s rollicking medley of a production. Although some serious notes are struck, particularly by Michelle Terry as an impassioned Viola, Holmes’s Twelfth Night – like his Midsummer Night’s Dream, which reopened the Globe in May – is primarily a caper, and one that ably blends bluegrass, Cher and Tina Turner with Shakespeare’s comedy of mistaken identities.

The cross-dressing Viola has plenty of company here: casting is gender-fluid, or “what you will”, throughout. Nadine Higgin plays Sir Toby Belch and Sophie Russell is Malvolio, while Victoria Elliott’s Feste wears a cocktail dress and heels in Orsino’s court, but binds her breasts beneath a boyish baseball uniform for Olivia’s household.

Holmes mixes periods, too. Viola enters dressed like a mournful Elizabeth I – ginger wig sodden, mascara running down her powdered cheeks – and, as Cesario, wears a doublet and breeches (as does brother Sebastian). But the rest of the cast, per Holmes’s Americana theming, are in more contemporary attire – fringed jackets, bolo ties, an Elvis quiff for Malvolio.

That matches Jean Chan’s broken-down Vegas design, which includes a leaping tiger from a carousel ride, a rusty abandoned car, an unlit sign putting the “ill” into “Illyria”, and a silent jukebox. It makes the shipwrecked twins more explicitly strangers in a strange land, and demonstrates how the whole place has been frozen by its rulers: Olivia ceasing to move forward the moment she lost her brother, Orsino stuck repeating his suit, and nostalgic music binding them to the past.

It is time, not she, decides Viola, which must then untangle the ensuing romantic knots: Olivia falling for “Cesario”, while she herself pines for Orsino. Holmes emphasises that element with church bells striking the hour, and his audience may well feel that we too are unthawing after a year suspended in time. The long-awaited family reunion, in particular, has a new magic.

On a more prosaic level, running the two-and-a-half-hour show without an interval, per the venue’s Covid protocols, is a tough ask given its posterior-punishing benches or the stamina required by the Groundlings (200 people can now purchase standing tickets, down from the usual 600-700). On my night, numerous audience members slipped out for a loo break.

Yet Terry is always a reason to return; she’s the soul of the production. Though funny expressing Viola’s dismay as events spiral out of control, she connects with Olivia through a solemn understanding of her grief. However, she also fiercely lambasts her for hurting Orsino, and likewise the duke for his arrogant contention that women cannot love as deeply as men. Terry’s Viola is fervent proof that they can.

Bryan Dick illustrates the performative melancholy of Orsino, who morosely identifies with a hanging deer carcass, while Shona Babayemi’s dignified Olivia is given a new lease of life through love. Her tragic opposite is Nadi Kemp-Safyi’s quick-witted Maria, dragged down by Higgin’s Sir Toby – a swaggering charmer, but a scarily mercurial drunk.

George Fouracres is a blithely idiotic, pink trouser-wearing Andrew Aguecheek, Ciaran O’Brien an amusingly plummy-voiced Sebastian, and Elliott’s Feste a cunning chancer. Sophie Russell’s tricked Malvolio goes from school-prefect scold to adorably flustered; the yellow stocking reveal is unforgettable.

The only duff note is drawing cynical laughs via exaggerated regional accents. Otherwise, this Twelfth Night comes close to achieving greatness.

Until Oct 30, and livestreamed on Sept 4 and Oct 23. Tickets: 020 7401 9919; shakespearesglobe.com